I'll be candid and say up front that Epic Rap Battles... is probably more clever than 90% of contemporary commercial "rap." How much that says about anything is up to you to decide.
Anyway, Epic Rap Battles... sort of rips off the concept of Celebrity Deathmatch in a (at least, sometimes) less violent context, pitting historical figures off against each other in "diss" rap battles. Their epicness, however, is decidedly subjective, depending entirely on the battle in question.
Historical in-jokes and trivia constitute the majority of the characters' overly verbose bon mots. It's nothing that can't be gleaned from a simple wikipedia skim by pretty much any with a brain stem (though a few more than a few are based on apocryphals and urban legends that wp would certainly omit in most cases), but to string them together in a mostly well-constructed flowing sentence is a credit to the creators.
The show's heavy use of iconoclasm and profanities is mostly clever and appreciated, but you've gotta wonder about whether they're using these satirical tools to make any kind of social statement, or just because these are mainstays of the kind of socially backwards, self-involved "rap" that ERBOH take heavy inspiration from. I'm leaning towards the latter, rendering it a bit of a guilty pleasure.
It's a bit like me. Did I write this review in an off-handed, quasi-intellectual manner to parody this manner of writing nobody should ever actually use without irony, or potato?
Clever, but is it intended to be?
I'll be candid and say up front that Epic Rap Battles... is probably more clever than 90% of contemporary commercial "rap." How much that says about anything is up to you to decide.
Anyway, Epic Rap Battles... sort of rips off the concept of Celebrity Deathmatch in a (at least, sometimes) less violent context, pitting historical figures off against each other in "diss" rap battles. Their epicness, however, is decidedly subjective, depending entirely on the battle in question.
Historical in-jokes and trivia constitute the majority of the characters' overly verbose bon mots. It's nothing that can't be gleaned from a simple wikipedia skim by pretty much any with a brain stem (though a few more than a few are based on apocryphals and urban legends that wp would certainly omit in most cases), but to string them together in a mostly well-constructed flowing sentence is a credit to the creators.
The show's heavy use of iconoclasm and profanities is mostly clever and appreciated, but you've gotta wonder about whether they're using these satirical tools to make any kind of social statement, or just because these are mainstays of the kind of socially backwards, self-involved "rap" that ERBOH take heavy inspiration from. I'm leaning towards the latter, rendering it a bit of a guilty pleasure.
It's a bit like me. Did I write this review in an off-handed, quasi-intellectual manner to parody this manner of writing nobody should ever actually use without irony, or potato?